Only For A Knight (12 page)

 

“See you, laddie,” the Black Stag groused, tossing a quick glance at his son, “some things ne’er change.
That one
still has eyes and ears everywhere. Mind it well if you are wise, and be wary of him.”

 

“You wound me, old friend,” Sir Marmaduke said, clearly unruffled despite his words. Looking most comfortable indeed, he gestured to a platter of honeyed oatcakes on a nearby table. A fresh jug of ale and clean drinking cups rounded up the simple but tasty fare.

 

Sir Marmaduke helped himself to one of the oatcakes. “I do not seek to sow unrest. I was but ordered to deliver refreshments since the sun will soon rise and Elspeth and your good lady wife are yet occupied tending Robbie’s . . .
companion.
”

 

“She is not my anything,” Robbie amended, lifting his voice above a sudden gust of wind rattling at the shutters. A cold, rain-damp draught rushed into the room, chilling him as surely as having to admit the maid was, and could not honorably be of lasting importance to him.

 

The notion galled and proved . . . unacceptable.

 

He wanted her with an urgency that stretched beyond all reason. Saints, he even felt an inexplicable oneness of spirit with her, as if she alone could make him whole.

 

Just thinking of her enflamed and heated him like a sheet of fire blazing all around him.

 

Even in the face of his father’s strange behavior.

 

Cold no more, despite the gray chill of the wet new day just beginning to lighten outside the solar’s tall, arch-topped windows, Robbie tossed off his plaid, dropping it irritably onto one of the twin-facing stone benches set into the sides of the window embrasure.

 

With more patience than he knew he possessed, he pushed up the sleeves of his tunic, not caring if his scowling-faced father or his e’er complacent Sassunach good-uncle noted anything unusual.

 

He eyed the matching rows of red half-moon nail marks on his forearms with pulse-quickening satisfaction.

 

His flame-haired vixen had scored him with the marks as they’d thundered across the causeway to the castle’s second gatehouse. And just looking at them, at the tangible proof of her fiery nature, was enough to tighten his loins and fill him with hot-crackling desire.

 

He knew instinctively that any man to lie with her would bear similar marks all down his back. And that fortunate lump would no doubt leave her bed more sated and drained than if he’d enjoyed the simultaneous attentions of a full score of the best-skilled courtesans in the realm.

 

He knew, too, that he had to have her.

 

In his bed and, even more so, in his life.

 

Aye, especially in his life.

 

But he thrust all such thought from his mind—for the moment—and fixed his father with a look he hoped would not appear disrespectful.

 

“You e’er favored oatcakes,” he said, gesturing to them. “Mayhap a bit of sustenance and ale will make our discourse less unpalatable for you.”

 

“I have no stomach for food,” Duncan snapped, his furious glance at the hapless mound of oatcakes more telling than he knew.

 

“You also lack appetite for answering the simplest questions, it would seem.” Sir Marmaduke stretched his long legs to the fire, dusted a scatter of oat crumbs from his knees. “If you would speak true and have done with your bellyaching, we could all snatch at least a semblance of sleep before the day begins in earnest.”

 

His face darkening, Duncan slid a pointed look at the door. “Naught is keeping you from your bed, you great lout of an Englishman,” he grated. “And I have told Robbie all I can. I have ne’er before seen his fiery-haired lass and her name is not known to me. Would that it were.”

 

Robbie gave his father an assessing look. He did not like the tone of those last four words. “How so?”

 

“How so?”
Duncan repeated, his exasperation palpable. “For many a good reason, never you doubt it.”

 

“Save the obvious—the maid’s own well-deserved sanctity of mind, I would hear the reasons,” Robbie declared, not missing the barely there twitch of a muscle just beneath his father’s left eye. Or the tight-thrumming tension deepening the lines bracketing the older man’s mouth.

 

“What are those reasons, h’mmm?” Robbie persisted, well aware he treaded dangerous ground but unable to stay his tongue.

 

Something in his father’s expression curdled Robbie’s blood and made him almost certain that his beauty’s identity, or momentary lack thereof, troubled his sire near as much as it vexed him.

 

Narrowing his eyes at his father, he dragged in a tight breath and wished the insistent pounding at his temples would stop—or at least lessen.

 

“Can we not cease this senseless beating of the air and be open with one another? Now, after all these years?” Robbie kept his tone level, maintained a calm that was entirely feigned.

 

But at his father’s silence, he ventured farther onto the thin ice he’d been purposely avoiding.

 

“Ne’er have I seen you so sullen,” he said, the throbbing in his forehead making it ever more difficult to resist returning his father’s glare. “Does your perturbation have aught to do with the name
Kenneth
being the only one the lass can recall?”

 

The Black Stag jerked at the reminder of his long-dead bastard half brother, bane of his existence and, in the knave’s nefarious lifetime, scourge of all Kintail.

 

“My half brother—may he be roasting on the hottest hob of hell—was not the only Highlandman to bear the name Kenneth,” he said of the one-time friend who’d repaid youthful love and camaraderie by seducing Duncan’s first wife, Robbie’s own equally dead mother.

 

Even worse, when confronted with his treachery, the blackguard had used his excellent sword skills to carve out Sir Marmaduke’s left eye and maim the Sassunach for life. And by the time he’d finally breathed his last, just a few blessedly short years later, the stain of his sins had steeped all of Kintail in shame and sorrow.

 

His face going dark as the cloudbanks e’er brimming o’er the moors, Duncan went to stand at one of the windows where he flexed and unflexed his fingers a few times before he spoke.

 

“Aye, son, ’tis true enough that the name
Kenneth
has not passed the lips of anyone beneath my roof in some years,” he admitted, tight-voiced, his rigid back to the room. “Most good men know better—and womenfolk would not dare.”

 

That said, he turned on his heel and, set-faced, strode to the table to pour himself a generous measure of heather ale. He downed the fine, frothy brew in one long swallow.

 

Looking back at Robbie, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “For truth, son, in all your years away, have you not yet learned that it serves nothing but ill to stir peacefully slumbering waters?”

 

“And if those waters have already been disturbed?”

 

“So-o-o!” Duncan all but snorted. “That is the way of it. I thought as much,” he said, the words charged with meaning. “As for those waters, my son, the dimmest of fools ken that even the most turbulent sea will settle again—given time. E’er poking into matters best left alone brings naught but grief.”

 

Robbie opened his mouth to counter that, but thought better of it. Instead, he pressed his lips together, his gaze fastening on a large blue-tinted stone half-hidden in the shadows of a deep-set alcove in the corner.

 

Clan MacKenzie’s Marriage Stone.

 

The sacred main piece of every MacKenzie wedding ceremony since time beyond mind.

 

Tall and phallic in shape, its entirety carved with ancient Celtic runes, the clan talisman, or swearing stone, bore a hole in its center—a hole through which a couple could clasp hands thus ensuring the blessing of their marriage.

 

A union the MacKenzie graybeards swore would then be joyous beyond all bounds and filled with love, harmony, and many healthy bairns.

 

Robbie frowned.

 

He could not imagine the famed Marriage Stone vibrating with paeans of praise and joy on his wedding day. Nor could he see the fabled stone casting even the faintest smile on his union with Lady Euphemia MacLeod.

 

With all surety,
he
could not smile on the marriage.

 

Not now.

 

A stance he would uphold even if he had not happened upon his beauty.

 

For tumultuous as his arrival and the exuberant greeting of his kinfolk had been, so loud with good cheer and the drinking of healths, he had not failed to note that his bride-to-be had not shown her face—had kept demonstratively to her room.

 

Robbie’s jaw locked in a frown.

 

Such behavior alone disqualified her as a suitable bride for any MacKenzie much less the future laird—the very grit of MacKenzie males and the e’er-present gloom permeating Eilean Creag required hearth-mates with steel in their veins.

 

Not women so spiteful or meek they take to their beds at the first quiver of adversity.

 

Robbie glanced at the Marriage Stone again, almost felt its grainy displeasure. Sakes, would he credit the prattle-mongers, all of Kintail already disapproved the match. Rampant were the whispered frettings and resentments of the castlefolk, kinsmen, and servitors alike.

 

And he’d seen the changes the supposed tight-lipped shrew had wrought to his father’s hall.

 

Unwelcome alterations
he
would not tolerate regardless of whether others at Eilean Creag had accepted them in goodwill or nay.

 

His mind set, he took a few steps toward his father, held up a hand. “Sir, I crave your pardon,” he began, determined to seize his happiness. “See you, I am no longer a whelp or stripling to cringe in my boots. However much I would avoid causing undue strife. Still, I cannot ignore certain sentiments when they are burning a hole inside me.”

 

His father glowered at him from beneath down-drawn brows. “By the grace of God,” he railed, clearly provoked to frothing anger, “when I saw how close you held the flame-haired lass as you rode into the bailey, I knew the way the wind blew . . . that disaster would soon befall us.”

 

Robbie half turned away, bit back a hot retort. “Think you I would willingly bring down disgrace on our house? Blacken the honor I worked so hard to accrue?” His every muscle strained and taut, he glanced up at the stone-vaulted ceiling, blew out a quick breath.

 

Looking back at his father at last, he threw down the gauntlet.

 

“Even so, I do not wish to keep my vow . . . I would see my betrothal broken,” he said, an incredible
rightness
flowing over him upon putting voice to the words. “Would that I could feel otherwise—but you should ken where my heart lies. I give you my word that I shall do naught, say nary a word, until I can think of a way to spare the lady Euphemia undue hurt and so that nothing goes ill with the MacLeods. I—”

 

“Faugh, you say!” The Black Stag fumed, wrath rolling off him in almost visible waves. “In the name of all that is holy, I have ne’er heard such folly! All in the land will esteem such a breech of vows as the basest affront. Do you have any idea how many seafaring friends I have promised they’d ne’er again be harassed by MacLeod’s foul chain? His hordes of murdering wreckers? Ne’er will we—”

 

“I will deal with MacLeod, though I pray it needn’t be with weaving steel.” Robbie took a deep breath, ignored his father’s fierce scowl. “But I am . . . sorry.”

 

Ignoring him, Duncan rounded on Sir Marmaduke.

 

“Did you know aught of this? Saints, save us! The lad prays he mustn’t draw his blade! Yet his own doings would shake a fist at the first true glimmer of peace we’ve seen in years.” He made an impatient gesture, glowered at his old friend. “This is an ill day, and such perfidy smacks of your kind of interference and machinations.”

 

Still reposed in the chair by the hearth fire, Marmaduke shook his head and spread his hands palms outward.

 

“God keep me from e’er meddling in the business of others,” he drawled, seemingly unfazed by his liege’s outburst. “In especial the privy doings of such a puissant and goodly young man as our Robbie.”

 

“Ho! There speaks the most meddlesome beast to e’er walk this earth,” the Black Stag shot back. “I ought have you tossed in the pit beneath this keep’s west tower for your prattle and denials.” He jabbed a finger at his friend. “’Tis fell deep our dungeon is, if you’ve forgotten. Hewn into the living rock by my own great-great-grandsire, and so narrow a poor body thrown in there can do naught but stand till the flesh rots from his bones—or he loses his mind.”

 

“Then I suggest we all seek our beds before your bellywinding gives us collective nightmares,” Sir Marmaduke suggested as he pushed to his feet, stretched his well-muscled arms above his head.

 

Crossing the solar in long strides, he slung a friendly arm around Robbie’s shoulders. “Yon devil’s tail is well clipped these days, never you worry,” he said, speaking as though Duncan weren’t standing there glaring fire-daggers at them. “His vexation will soon be by with, and meantime, if no one has told you, you can bed down in my old chamber—’twas your father’s own quarters before he relinquished it to me, and the only rooms standing vacant at present . . . or so I am told.”

 

He sent a questioning glance at Duncan, but that one’s only response was a curt nod.

 

Until Sir Marmaduke started guiding Robbie to the door.

 

“Stay your feet, you two—a word yet before you go,” the Black Stag called, the sheer authority in his voice halting them despite Sir Marmaduke’s casual airs and Robbie’s own determination to see his will done.

 

“There will be no breaking of vows, Robert MacKenzie,” Duncan said, the close-checked anger in his voice more ominous than any thunder echoed from high. “Too many high altercations would ensue—and too many promises of peace have indeed been granted to my people and allies. You
will
wed the lady Euphemia and at the soonest.”

 

“Damnation, Father, but I say you I cannot,” Robbie swore, clenching his hands. “I—”